Youths in Mulanje district have expressed optimism about improved quality youth-friendly reproductive health services delivery as Network of Journalists Living with HIV (JONEHA) has started collecting qualitative and quantitative data under its Community-Led Monitoring (CLM) initiative.
After Malawi’s Southern region was badly hit by cyclone Freddy in 2023last year, JONEHA announced plans to implement CLM initiative which seeks to empower community members, specifically recipients of care in Mulanje and Phalombe districts to advocate for quality health service delivery.
According to UNAIDS, CLM allows people affected by health inequities, particularly in HIV, tuberculosis (TB) and malaria, to systematically monitor services, analyse data they collect, and together with other key partners, conduct evidence-driven advocacy to improve service delivery, generate solutions and create an enabling environment.
Speaking at the onset of data collection exercise at Namulenga Health Center in the area of Traditional Authority (TA) Juma in Mulanje district, 21-year-old Emmanuel Awufi said he is very confident that CLM project will help in addressing some of the challenges youths face when accessing reproductive health care and other health services.
Awufi who is a member of Tikondane Youth Club which accommodates over 60 youths from eight villages under TA Juma, said JONEHA’s CLM has given them an opportunity to voice out their concerns and he says they can’t wait to see some improvements in service delivery.
“CLM initiative which is being implemented here in Mulanje by JONEHA, has given us the youths, an opportunity to voice out our concerns and we want to thank this organization for the idea to bring this initiative here.
“We understand that after this, there shall be engagement meetings with other stakeholders and authorities where these concerns will be discussed and analysed. We are hopeful that at the end of this initiative, health service delivery of youth-friendly reproductive health care will improve, there have to be more conducive environment for us (youths) in our health facilities,” explained Awufi.
He then mentioned frequent condom and other drug stock outs in health centers which he said sometimes expose youths to unprotected sex as some of the challenges they encounter when accessing reproductive health services including unfriendly staff at health facilities and lack of privacy.
On his part, Hastings Mwanza who is the Resource Mobilization and Advocacy Officer for JONEHA, assured people in the district of more improved health services delivery, especially on HIV services and availability of essential medicines drug supply which CLM project is currently focusing on in the district.
“The project is being implemented in Phalombe and Mulanje and we are focusing on drug stock outs at health centers, HIV testing, Retention especially treatment interruption/defaulting, viral load testing and also differentiated service delivery models. In Mulanje, we were doing data collection because in CLM, communities are empowered to do routine data collection so that they should monitor health services delivery.
“The collected data will help them to analyze progress of various health programmes which will be followed by engagements to map the way forward on solving some of the challenges. This will really help to improving service delivery in health centers,” said Mwanza.
Mwanza further pointed out that JONEHA’s choice for Mulanje and Phalombe is because the districts were hit by cyclone Freddy which they think affected health service delivery.
It is further reported that data collection exercise under CLM project, is being done by community data collectors which JONEHA trained a couple of weeks ago in the two beneficiary districts of Phalombe and Mulanje.
